Anti-corruption anti-PAC nearly at $1M mark, thanks to tech heroes

Brian sez, "At the beginning of the month, Boing Boing reported on Mayday PAC, the super PAC started by Lawrence Lessig which intended to raise $1M in 30 days via a kickstarter-like crowdfunding, to fight for fundamental reform in the way candidates for Congress and members of Congress raised money for their elections.

Day 12 is just starting, and they're just shy of 90% of their goal. What's more interesting, however, is the story of the 'tech heroes.' On the second day of the launch, the architecture behind the site (a basic WordPress installation on a LAMP stack) simply couldn't scale to meet the massive demand. As if that wasn't bad enough, the stress sent the site administrator, literally, to the hospital.

That was when volunteers who had been following @lessig and @MayOneUS on Twitter offered to come together and design a better solution based on Google App Engine. Congregating in #MayOne on the Freenode IRC network, the volunteers, led by Aaron Lifshin, and dubbed the 'Tech First Responders,' solved the performance problems and 'saved' the site.

'There was a groundswell of support and generosity that was overwhelming. It was impossible to coordinate and take in all of the help and advice that so many people offered. So there are many who will be missed out in the mention. Many who came to offer, support, comfort, words of wisdom, who waited to see if a job would be found for them,' said Lifshin.